Lawmakers rethink
bills on mad-cow

Freking, Kevin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
March 1, 2004 Monday

WASHINGTON - The discovery of one case of mad-cow disease in Washington state has led to a flurry of new bills and a rethinking of old ones on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas is the co-sponsor of one of the new bills, which would establish a national tracking system for every cow in the United States.

Ross also has softened his opposition to a ban that prevents crippled cows from going to meatpacking plants. Eight months ago, he voted against the ban. On Friday, he called the ban prudent. Cows that can't walk under their own power are more likely to have mad-cow disease, which is why many people have sought the ban.

Ross said the loss of dozens of export markets has led to the sense of urgency as well as to his acceptance of the ban on "downer cattle."

"On Dec. 23, with one single cow being diagnosed with [madcow disease], it's totally changed the future for our cattle producers both large and small," Ross said. "I can tell you it's devastated the cattle industry. It hasn't been as bad as it could have been, but farmers are basically looking at a 20 percent reduction in the prices they were getting a year ago."

Ross and other members of a House subcommittee will hold the first hearings on his bill Friday. The hearing will take place at an unusual site - a livestock show and rodeo in Houston. Ross said the tracking system would allow the government to trace a cow's history from birth to death, which is important when one wants to find out which animals may have come in contact with a diseased cow.

"The fact is, we've still got 51 cows unaccounted for that we think came in contact with that single diseased cow," Ross said. "There have been instances, as a result of that, where they've had to destroy an entire herd of 400 or 500 cattle, because they didn't know which cow within that herd [had been exposed], but they knew that one had."

Consumer and animal-welfare groups familiar with madcow disease said the bill co-sponsored by Ross is one of several steps the government should take to prevent the spread of the disease.

Bills have been filed in the House and Senate that encompass most of the consumer groups' recommendations, including the testing of all cattle older than 20 months and keeping downer cattle out of slaughterhouses. The groups say better enforcement of existing regulations, particularly the ban of cattle byproducts in cattle feed, is also necessary.

"Enforcing the feed ban is possibly the most important protection we have against mad-cow disease in this country," said Peter Lurie, an analyst with Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. "The feed ban, or the lack of enforcement of the feed ban, is what allows the disease to feed on itself."

WHAT ABOUT COST?

Mad-cow disease is a slowly progressing, degenerative disease that affects the central-nervous system of adult cattle and eventually results in death. When portions of diseased cattle are ground into feed, the disease can spread if that feed is given to other cattle.

Lurie cited a 2002 report from the General Accounting Office that said the Food and Drug Administration "has not acted promptly to compel firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle."

The United States produces some 95 million cattle annually. In Arkansas, it's about 1.8 million. Most of the cows in Arkansas are "feeder cattle," which are sold at a relatively young age to feed lots. The average Arkansas farmer keeps about 30 cows, and about that many calves.

Travis Justice, an official at the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said Arkansas' farmers realize a tracking system will come in some form. Their concerns are cost, what information can be made public and liability. The average cow changes ownership three times, so farmers want to know if owner No. 1 can be held liable for decisions or actions that were more than likely the work of owner No. 3, Justice said, in describing farmers' questions.

"We don't expect the entire costs to be borne by the government. We would certainly want it to be a partnership, however," Justice said. "There is a public interest here we're trying to protect. Everyone's got some interests at stake here, so it would only be right for everybody to share in the costs."

TESTING FOR MAD-COW While one bill filed in the House would require all cattle to undergo testing for mad-cow disease, groups such as Public Citizen said they would be satisfied with testing for all cattle older than 20 months. Even then, such testing would run into the millions each year in terms of the number of animals tested. The Department of Agriculture currently tests about 40,000 animals a year.

Most of the action taken to prevent mad-cow disease from spreading is the result of rule making at the agency level rather than legislation.

Last summer, a bill was narrowly defeated in the House that would have banned downer cattle from being slaughtered by meatpackers. The bill passed by voice vote in the Senate, meaning there was no roll-call vote. Of Arkansans, Ross, fellow Democratic Rep. Marion Berry and Republican Rep. John Boozman voted against the bill. Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder voted for it.

After the diseased cow was discovered, the Department of Agriculture enacted the ban, even though it had previously said it was unnecessary.

"I believe the fact that USDA banned all downer cows immediately after Dec. 23 was a good thing to do to restore consumer confidence, but, in the long term, we've got to look at that issue," Ross said. "When a cow is unloaded into a trailer at a sale barn and breaks its leg or pulls a muscle, it no longer enters the food supply, even though the meat of the animal would be just as good and healthy as a cow that didn't break its leg or pull a muscle."

BANNING DOWNER COWS But Wayne Pacelle, a spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States, said an animal's ability to walk is the first thing affected by mad-cow disease.

"The fact that they have a broken leg may be precisely the first indication of an animal having BSE [bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease]. All three animals that were found BSE-positive in North America, the first one in '93 had a broken leg, the second one in Canada had pneumonia, the one in Washington state had a calving injury, so they all had problems you wouldn't necessarily associate with BSE," Pacelle said. "If Ross and others want to return to USDA inspectors making visual judgments, we'll be in the same circumstances we were before December."

Pacelle said the Humane Society first began to lobby for the legislation on downer cattle because most injuries are preventable through better husbandry practices, and if farmers can't profit from an injured animal, they will take better care of the animal.

Pacelle said the Humane Society and other groups would work to get the rule on downer cattle passed into law this year. That way, it would be more likely that the ban would be permanent.

Bills calling for the ban have been filed in both the House and Senate.